Vladimir Lenin

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky

Can There Be Equality Between the Exploited and the Exploiter?

Kautsky argues as follows:

(1) “The exploiters have always formed only
a small minority of the population” (p. 14 of
Kautsky’s pamphlet).

This is indisputably true. Taking this as the starting point,
what should be the argument? One may argue in a Marxist, a
socialist way. In which case one would proceed from the relation
between the exploited and the exploiters. Or one may argue in a
liberal, a bourgeois-democratic way. And in that case one would
proceed from the relation between the majority and the
minority.

If we argue in a Marxist way, we must say: the exploiters
inevitably transform the state (and we are speaking of democracy,
i.e., one of the forms of the state) into an instrument of the
rule of their class, the exploiters, over the exploited. Hence, as
long as there are exploiters who rule the majority, the exploited,
the democratic state must inevitably be a democracy for the
exploiters. A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ
from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited,
“and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the
suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its
exclusion from “democracy”.

If we argue in a liberal way, we must say: the majority
decides, the minority submits. Those who do not submit are
punished. That is all. Nothing need be said about the class
character of the state in general, or of “pure
democracy” in particular, because it is irrelevant; for a
majority is a majority and a minority is a minority. A pound of
flesh is a pound of flesh, and that is all there is to it.

And this is exactly how Kautsky argues.

(2) “Why should the rule of the proletariat
assume, and necessarily assume, a form which is incompatible with
democracy?” (P. 21). Then follows a very detailed and a very
verbose explanation, backed by a quotation from Marx and the
election figures of the Paris Commune, to the effect that the
proletariat is in the majority. The conclusion is: “A regime
which is so strongly rooted in the people has not the slightest
reason for encroaching upon democracy. It cannot always dispense
with violence in cases when violence is employed to suppress
democracy. Violence can only be met with violence. But a regime
which knows that it has popular backing will employ violence only
to protect democracy and not to destroy it. It
would be simply suicidal if it attempted to do away with its most
reliable basis—universal suffrage, that deep source of
mighty moral authority” (p. 22).

As you see, the relation between the exploited and the
exploiters has vanished in Kautsky’s argument. All that
remains is majority in general, minority in general, democracy in
general, the “pure democracy” with which we are
already familiar.

And all this, mark you, is said apropos of the Paris
Commune! To make things clearer I shall quote Marx and Engels
to show what they said on the subject of dictatorship apropos of
the Paris Commune:

Marx: “. . . When the workers replace the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by their revolutionary
dictatorship . . . to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie
. . . the workers invest the state with a revolutionary and
transitional form . . .”[14]

Engels: “. . . And the victorious party”
(in a revolution) “must maintain its rule by means of the
terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the
Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the
authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we,
on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that
authority? . . .”[15]

Engels: “As, therefore, the state is only a
transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the
revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it is
sheer nonsense to talk of a ‘free people’s
state’; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it
does not need it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold
down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak
of freedom the state as such ceases to exist. . . .”[16]

Kautsky is as far removed from Marx and Engels as heaven is
from earth, as a liberal from a proletarian revolutionary. The
pure democracy and simple “democracy” that Kautsky
talks about is merely a paraphrase of the “free
people’s state”, i.e., sheer
nonsense. Kautsky, with the learned air of a most
learned armchair fool, or with the innocent air of a ten-year-old
schoolgirl, asks: Why do we need a dictatorship when we have a
majority? And Marx and Engels explain:

—to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie;

—to inspire the reactionaries with fear;

—to maintain the authority of the armed people against
the bourgeoisie;

—that the proletariat may forcibly hold down its
adversaries.

Kautsky does not understand these explanations. Infatuated with
the “purity” of democracy, blind to its bourgeois
character, he “consistently” urges that the majority,
since it is the majority, need not “break down the
resistance” of the minority, nor “forcibly hold it
down”—it is sufficient to suppress
cases of infringement of democracy. Infatuated with
the “purity” of democracy, Kautsky inadvertently
commits the same little error that all bourgeois democrats always
commit, namely, he takes formal equality (which is nothing but a
fraud and hypocrisy under capitalism) for actual equality! Quite a
trifle!

The exploiter and the exploited cannot be equal.

This truth, however unpleasant it may be to Kautsky,
nevertheless forms the essence of socialism.

Another truth: there can be no real, actual equality until all
possibility of the exploitation of one class by another has been
totally destroyed.

The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a
successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But
except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be
destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the
landowners and capitalists of any big country at one
stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political
act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is
necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in
actual fact, to replace their management of the factories
and estates by a different management, workers’ management,
in actual fact. There can be no equality between the
exploiters—who for many generations have been better off
because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and
habits—and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the
most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are
downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a
long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue
to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have
money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some
movable property—often fairly considerable; they still have
various connections, habits of organisation and management;
knowledge of all the “secrets” (customs, methods,
means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close
connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and
think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in
the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so
forth.

If the exploiters are defeated in one country only—and
this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a
number of countries is a rare exception—they still
remain stronger than the exploited, for the international
connections of the exploiters are enormous. That a section of the
exploited from the least advanced middle-peasant, artisan and
similar groups of the population may, and indeed does, follow the
exploiters has been proved by all revolutions, including
the Commune (for there were also proletarians among the Versailles
troops, which the most learned Kautsky has
“forgotten”).

In these circumstances, to assume that in a revolution which is
at all profound and serious the issue is decided simply by the
relation between the majority and the minority is the acme of
stupidity, the silliest prejudice of a common liberal, an attempt
to deceive the people by concealing from them a
well-established historical truth. This historical truth is that
in every profound revolution, the prolonged, stubborn and
desperate resistance of the exploiters, who for a number of
years retain important practical advantages over the exploited, is
the rule. Never—except in the sentimental fantasies
of the sentimental fool Kautsky—will the exploiters submit
to the decision of the exploited majority without trying to make
use of their advantages in a last desperate battle, or series of
battles.

The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire
historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters
inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope
turns into attempts at restoration. After their first
serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters—who had not
expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never
conceded the thought of it—throw themselves with energy
grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a
hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the
“paradise”, of which they were deprived, on behalf of
their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life
and whom now the “common herd” is condemning to ruin
and destitution (or to “common” labour . . .). In the
train of the capitalist exploiters follow the wide sections of the
petty bourgeoisie, with regard to whom decades of historical
experience of all countries testify that they vacillate and
hesitate, one day marching behind the proletariat and the next day
taking fright at the difficulties of the revolution; that they
become panic-stricken at the first defeat or semidefeat of the
workers, grow nervous, run about aimlessly, snivel, and rush from
one camp into the other—just like our Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries.

In these circumstances, in an epoch of desperately acute war,
when history presents the question of whether age-old and
thousand-year-old privileges are to be or not to be–at such a time
to talk about majority and minority, about pure democracy, about
dictatorship being unnecessary and about equality between the
exploiter and the exploited! What infinite stupidity and abysmal
philistinism are needed for this!

However, during the decades of comparatively
“peaceful” capitalism between 1871 and 1914, the
Augean stables of philistinism, imbecility, and apostasy
accumulated in the socialist parties which were adapting
themselves to opportunism. . . .

* *

*

The reader will probably have noticed that Kautsky, in the
passage from his pamphlet quoted above, speaks of an attempt to
encroach upon universal suffrage (calling it, by the way, a deep
source of mighty moral authority, whereas Engels, apropos of the
same Paris Commune and the same question of dictatorship, spoke of
the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie—a
very characteristic difference between the philistine’s and
the revolutionary’s views on
“authority” . . .).

It should be observed that the question of depriving the
exploiters of the franchise is a purely Russian question,
and not a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat in
general. Had Kautsky, casting aside hypocrisy, entitled his
pamphlet Against the Bolsheviks, the title would have
corresponded to the contents of the pamphlet, and Kautsky would
have been justified in speaking bluntly about the franchise. But
Kautsky wanted to come out primarily as a
“theoretician”. He called his pamphlet The
Dictatorship of the Proletariat—in general. He speaks
about the Soviets and about Russia specifically only in the second
part of the pamphlet, beginning with the sixth paragraph. The
subject dealt with in the first part (from which I took the
quotation) is democracy and dictatorship in
general. In speaking about the franchise, Kautsky
betrayed himself as an opponent of the Bolsheviks,
who does not care a brass farthing for theory. For
theory, i.e., the reasoning about the general (and not the
nationally specific) class foundations of democracy and
dictatorship, ought to deal not with a special question, such as
the franchise, but with the general question of whether democracy
can be preserved for the rich, for the exploiters in the
historical period of the overthrow of the exploiters and the
replacement of their state by the state of the exploited.

That is the way, the only way, a theoretician can present the
question.

We know the example of the Paris Commune, we know all that was
said by the founders of Marxism in connection with it and in
reference to it. On the basis of this material I examined, for
instance, the question of democracy and dictatorship in my
pamphlet, The State and Revolution, written before the October
Revolution. I did not say anything at all about restricting
the franchise. And it must be said now that the question of
restricting the franchise is a nationally specific and not a
general question of the dictatorship. One must approach the
question of restricting the franchise by studying the specific
conditions of the Russian revolution and the specific
path of its development. This will be done later on in
this pamphlet. It would be a mistake, however, to guarantee in
advance that the impending proletarian revolutions in Europe will
all, or the majority of them, be necessarily accompanied by
restriction of the franchise for the bourgeoisie. It may be
so. After the war and the experience of the Russian revolution it
probably will be so; but it is not absolutely necessary
for the exercise of the dictatorship, it is not an
indispensable characteristic of the logical concept
“dictatorship”, it does not enter as an
indispensable condition in the historical and class
concept “dictatorship”.

The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of
dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the
exploiters as a class, and, consequently, the
infringement of “pure democracy”, i.e., of
equality and freedom, in regard to that
class.

This is the way, the only way, the question can be put
theoretically. And by failing to put the question thus, Kautsky
has shown that he opposes the Bolsheviks not as a theoretician,
but as a sycophant of the opportunists and the bourgeoisie.

In which countries, and given what national features of
capitalism, democracy for the exploiters will be in one or another
form restricted (wholly or in part), infringed upon, is a question
of the specific national features of this or that capitalism, of
this or that revolution. The theoretical question is different: Is
the dictatorship of the proletariat possible without
infringing democracy in relation to the exploiting class?

It is precisely this question, the only theoretically
important and essential one, that Kautsky has evaded. He has
quoted all sorts of passages from Marx and Engels, except
those which bear on this question, and which I quoted
above.

Kautsky talks about anything you like, about everything that is
acceptable to liberals and bourgeois democrats and does not go
beyond their circle of ideas, but he does not talk about the main
thing, namely, the fact that the proletariat cannot achieve
victory without breaking the resistance of the
bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its
adversaries, and that, where there is “forcible
suppression”, where there is no “freedom”,
there is, of course, no democracy.

This Kautsky has not understood.

* *

*

We shall now examine the experience of the Russian revolution
and that divergence between the Soviets of Deputies and the
Constituent Assembly which led to the dissolution of the latter
and to the withdrawal of the franchise from the bourgeoisie.